Dispatches from Israel 20

by Helen Kaye

[My friend Helen Kaye has been sending me articles and reviews from her work on the theater and culture desk at the Jerusalem Post since 2010 (“Help! It’s August: Kid-Friendly Summer Festivals in Israel,” posted on Rick On Theater  on 12 September), just under a year-and-a-half after I started the blog.  Her first “Dispatches from Israel” was posted on 23 January 2013, a little more than seven years ago.  Below is “Dispatches from Israel 20,” the latest in Helen’s line of 23 posts on ROT.

[I’m always glad to post Helen’s reviews from the JP because, first, it’s a window into the theater world of another society, and, second, I get to bring another voice to ROTters aside from my own.  Furthermore, when I read Helen’s JP reviews, for which she’s allowed very few words—I marvel at how clear she is in so little space, while I go on for pages and pages to no more effect and probably less.

[So here, once again (and not for the last time, I fervently hope), is Helen Kaye on the current Israeli theater scene.] 

Spring Awakening

By Frank Wedekind

Translated by Ido Riklin

Directed by Moshe Kepten

Habima Theater, Tel Aviv; 13 January 2020

These 14-year-old kids are dirt-ignorant about their physical selves. It’s not their fault but that of the society in which they live; that late 19th century German society that lays a God-mandated taboo on any discussion of the body, let alone reproduction, that makes a near-sacred virtue of obedience to parental or other authority, that enshrines repression as a virtue.

Wedekind’s Spring Awakening (1891/2), aptly subtitled A Children’s Tragedy, lays out the dire consequences in all their awful detail. Moshe Kepten’s unsentimental, spare production shows us these with restraint, compassion and love. This is a reverberant Spring Awakening that leaves us with the apprehension that our own teens, even though the knowledge of human reproduction is no longer proscribed, must also come to terms with bodies that are undergoing the (always) fraught transition from childhood to grown-up.

“One more summer of childhood,”  Wendla Bergman (Amit Farkash) begs her mother (Miki Peleg), who wants to put her in long dresses as a sign she’s growing up, but it’s not to be. “Tell me how babies come into the world,” she entreats but Mrs Bergman, as quashed, alas, as her child, literally cannot. Even after school-idol Melchior (Nadir Eldar) rapes her (he really, really didn’t mean to), she has no idea what’s happened, a letter he writes her leads to Melchior’s incarceration in a merciless reform school, and a botched abortion later kills her.

The sexual yearnings (unidentified of course), assailing Moritz (Sheffi Marciano), his father’s (Gil Frank) unachievable expectations, physical and verbal abuse, are too much for him and he commits suicide. The Utterly Depraved Forbidden feelings battering Ernst (Kobi Marimi) turn him upside-down; he’s caged, outside, yet sings of another world, one that will allow him to be gay, to be who he is without shame.

And yes, there are songs in this production. The melodies are by Ohad Hitman, the lyrics are by Noam Horev, and their purpose (achieved), is to complement and enrich the action, not to turn the play into a musical. Moreover they are sung wonderfully by Ernst, by Martha (Roni Dalumi) whose powerful “My Own Child” vows that he will grow up free of the verbal, physical and sexual abuse she is suffering, by Wendla and some of the others.

And so it goes. The times they live in bruise and maim these children, and if it all seems a tad over the top, it must be remembered that the play anticipates German Expressionism – an emotionally subjective movement.

The acting is uniformly excellent. You never feel that the adult actors who are playing these luckless children are talking down to their characters, whom each has made special. For instance, Shahar Raz, who plays Hansy – the school sneak – has invested him with a delicious snigger.

Some of the adult roles are deliberate caricatures, such as Frau Knochenbruch (Ruth Landau) or Herr Sonnenstich (Rotem Kenan), the names themselves deliberate parodies, while the others, such of those as Peleg and Frank, are cast rigidly in the mold of their time.

Eran Atzmon’s set comprises 10 chairs, a carpet of dead leaves and a ‘stone/wood cage’ that turns (literally) into a variously lighted (Avi Yona Bueno) arena – a boxing ‘ring’ turned on edge – for many of the variously venued events. To this must be added Guy Rotem’s rich video art that also enhances what’s happening.

Habima’s Spring Awakening? Theater at its most rewarding.

[Wedekind’s Spring Awakening [Frühlings Erwachen] is the source of the rock musical of the same title with book and lyrics by Steven Sater and music by Duncan Sheik that ran on Broadway   Conceived in the late 1990s, it went through various workshops, concerts, and rewrites to open at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre on 10 December 2006; the production closed on 18 January 2009 after 859 performances and 29 previews, winning eight 2007 Tonys (including Best Musical), plus 14 other Broadway and Off-Broadway awards.].

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The Wanderers

By Anna Ziegler

Translated by Roy Chen

Directed by Amir I. Wolf

Gesher Theater, Tel Aviv; 28 January 2020

What makes us tick? Why do we do what we do? How come we’re at once transparent and opaque? Can we really say of somebody “I know you”? Aren’t there things we keep to ourselves, deep within the crannies of the heart? The Wanderers Anna Ziegler’s very accomplished, tightly knit Chinese puzzle box of a play takes a step or two toward telling us because in its essence Wanderers is a play about love, about intimacy, about levels of intimacy among two seemingly disparate sets of people. Among us all therefore?

We meet Ultra Orthodox couple Esther (Tali Osadchy) and Shmuli (Henry David) just after their arranged marriage. Each is holding one end of a black ribbon (the ties that bind?). They have not yet consummated their marriage. We meet Ultra Secular Sophie (Netta Shpiegelman) and Abe (Shlomi Bertonov) at a perilous moment in their not unfraught marriage. Both are celebrity authors. Then Abe’s initially impulsive online flirtation with glamorous movie star Julia Cheever (Lena Freifeld) pushes itself between them.

What subsequently occurs takes place on Michael Kramenko’s admirable set of ramps and screens under Karen Granek’s elusive, evocative lighting, as the connections among these five people slowly emerge.

Mr. Wolf has directed his actors as if in a series of screen close-ups, and they have responded with passionate, precisely nuanced performances that receive the audience’s absolute, totally focused attention.

“When I left Brooklyn, I thought I’d broken through the fence,” says Esther to Shmuli at once point, “but I find it’s inside me.” Osadchy’s Esther is multi-dimensional, at once fearful and courageous, pliant and adamant, hesitant and determined. As Shmuli, David is both a devout and unbending adherent of his traditions, yet willy-nilly starts to question them because he loves, and to him that love is holy. Bertonov’s Abe (Bertonov also wrote the music for the play), runs the gamut from near abject fear to brashness, as he strives to communicate, to acknowledge his heart. “Of course I hide things from myself,” he says to Sophie, whom Shpiegelman portrays with humor, guts, confidence and lack of it. Freifeld’s sensual Julia is part real, part goddess, part illusion.

This thoughtful, very excellent The Wanderers is a treat – perhaps a signpost – for the eyes and the heart.

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Gently

By Shiri Nadav Naor

Directed by Moshe Naor

Lyrics by Shaanan Streett

Score by Amir Lekner

Choreography by Tom Appelbaum

Haifa Theater, Haifa; 29 January 2020

There is a deliberate irony – not forgetting the title – to  this appealing, sometimes raucous, sometimes tender, always entertaining, often hard-hitting musical, not least in its (unintentional, I’m sure), stars. They are the comic relief of Adam Hirsch and Ashot Gasparian as a couple of lazy, benighted, racist cops who have some nifty musical numbers as they bedevil, torment and generally harass the poor and black refugees of Gently. Another irony is that (mainly) Ethiopian Jewish actor/singers, themselves the targets of local cops, and whose Jewishness the all-white Rabbinate questions, are portraying African refugees whom nobody wants in a country built upon the ashes of the Jewish Holocaust so that Jews might avoid persecution by having a place to call their own.

The musical’s title is the name of an intinerant musician, the very charismatic Gili Yalo who charms his way through the character of Malachi Gently. The elegant and classy Esther Rada plays his wife Miriam who has recently been delivered of a white baby – the actual delivery scene being a very effective company number to the Hebrew translation of “Amazing Grace”. When the cops see the white baby, they arrest Miriam – she sings the bitter, hard-edged “Just Shut Up” to help her keep her mouth shut and thus avoid a beating. In desperation Malachi turns to Yaron Brovinsky who has a tour de force of his own, keeping his foot permanently in his trying-to-be PC mouth as he plays TV celeb Michael Fried, whose cleaning lady Miriam is. Fried’s intervention does the trick, Miriam and baby are released, and in gratitude Malachi invites him to dinner. Wouldn’t you know that the cops turn up there too – and things go disastrously wrong.

But you can’t have a musical that ends in tragedy, so for the finale the whole company joins in the Hebrew version of “I wish I knew how it feels to be free” by Billy Taylor and Richard Carroll Lamb that was the anthem of the Civil Rights Movement

Lily Ben Nachshon’s outrageous set of pylons, electronic billboards and skyscrapers behind a scrim is perfectly an urban grimscape. Yuval Kaspin’s costumes are ingenious, often glitzy to vulgar, and therefore wonderful, the songs tell their own story, properly complementing the plot, Bambi’s lighting zings along, the singing by both principals and the group called Liberation is top-notch, and if the choreography is prosaic, it doesn’t matter because – bottom line – Mr. Naor has given us not only a humdinger of a production but also something to think about.

Dispatches from Israel 17

by Helen Kaye

[Earlier this week (26 March), I posted two of Helen Kaye’s reviews  from the Jerusalem Post, Sholem Asch’s God of Vengeance (1906) and :Paula Vogel’s Indecent (2017), both at the Cameri Theater in Tel Aviv.  A few days after Helen sent me those pieces, she sent me four more—from the end of 2018 and the beginning of 2019.  Here are those notices: one from the Habima Theater, Israel’s national theater (My Mika by Gadi Inbar); one from the Gesher Theater (Lolita/Jeanne d’Arc by Yeheskel Lazarov); and two more from the Cameri (Who’s a Jew by Jean-Claude Grumberg and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Dale Wasserman).  It’s an eclectic collection of productions.  As for the rest, I’ll let Helen tell you.  ~Rick]

My Mika

By Gadi Inbar

Directed by Moshe Kepten

Habima Theater, Tel Aviv; 10 October 2018

“These are the songs I grew up on,” exuberantly declared a lady in the foyer of Habima, “this is the second time I’ve come to see the show.” The songs she speaks of are those by much loved song-writer Yair Rosenblum (1944-96), all 22 of them, plus a five-song medley that fuel the close to three hour overlong musical My Mika, a superbly conceived and executed revival of an epic melodrama that was first done at the Bet Zvi Drama School in 2003.

The story concerns a fraught period in Israeli history, stretching from just before the 1967 Six Day War, and the triumphalism that ensued, to the chastening aftermath of the almost disastrous 1973 Yom Kippur war.

Mika (Amit Farkash) and her friends are graduating from high-school, exhilarated by a future whose possibilities they anticipate. Then comes the ’67 war. Mika’s boy-friend Gidi (Nadir Eldad), deeply traumatized (PTSD) by it, repudiates her, his holocaust survivor mother Hanka (Miki Kamm) and all his friends, and decamps for America. When, after several years, he returns it is to find that Mika is about to wed Ari (Matan Shavit) who has become religious and divorced Noa (Revital Zalman), his childhood sweetheart. Kadosh (Ya’akov Cohen), Mika’s shopkeeper Dad, hovers approvingly. Venal, yet goodhearted Meni (Moshe Ashkenazi) and Debbie (Oshrat Ingedashet) are a happy family, and Elisha (Doron Brookman) observes – as he tends to do – from the edge. Then comes the Yom Kippur war and their world almost shatters.

Realising that adverse criticism may well be considered sacrilege, it still does not really do to take what is essentially a high-school level musical – perhaps to educate an oblivious generation to the time – and dress it up in adult trappings. That said, these are truly amazing from the intricacies of Eran Atzmon’s multilevel smoothly mobile set to Yelena Kelrich’s spot on period costuming, to Keren Granak’s dramatic lighting and to Shai Boder’s stunning video art. Oz Morag’s choreography achieves masterpiece level. That it and the music incorporate echoes of West Side Story are not coincidence as some of the musicals’ thinking is similar.

Above all, punctuated by wars as our existence here is, Mika shows the all but overwhelming centrality of the Army to Israeli life and values.

As always, when it comes to musicals Kepten’s direction soars and his actors take flight. It goes without saying that both Kamm and Cohen are superb. Indeed, Cohen’s sly humor has the audience giggling mightily. The rest, soloists and chorus are also very, very good, with a ‘but’ in there. As Mika and Gidi, Farkash and Eldad need to inhabit their characters more from within, and the same goes for Zalman and Shavit; Eldad, however, beautifully portrays Gidi’s self-absorption. Ashkenazi’s Meni is a steady and steadying presence, but most of the acting honors go to Ingedashet and Brookman whose empathic Debbie and principled, brave Elisha are very real.

This is a musical. A musical has songs and singing actors to present them. Unfortunately they were so over-amped that who knows what their voices, often pleasing despite the elevated decibels, actually sound like.

The Ammunition Hill number in Act I was breath-taking. Act II, the lead-up to the Yom Kippur War was tighter, more dramatic and stronger for it, and if you are not awash in tears by the powerful ending, then you have tungsten for a heart.

Fitting or not, quibbles or not, if you freeze dry this My Mika, then shrink wrap and export it as the distillation of what it means to be Israeli, perhaps we’d be better understood, not to mention that it’d sell out in a moment.

[Bet Zvi (or Beit Zvi as the school spells its English name) School for the Performing Arts in Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv, is the first theater school in Israel that’s unaffiliated with an established theater.  Established in 1950, Beit Zvi emphasizes acting in real productions and established a theater at the school for graduates that mounts plays not staged by the country’s repertory theaters.]

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Lolita/Jeanne d’Arc

Adapted, staged and designed by Yeheskel Lazarov

Gesher Theater, Tel Aviv; 10 December 2018

First of all, congratulations are in order to Gesher, Yekezkel Lazarov, Israel (Sasha) Demidov and Doron Tavori. To Gesher, which, since its first performances in the early ‘90s, has never been afraid to stick its neck out, to Lazarov for, on the face of it, a most unlikely combination of heroines, and to actors Demidov and Tavori for bravura performances.

Lolita follows the iconic book by Vladimir Nabokov on Humbert Humbert, an aging and mentally unstable pedophile’s (Demidov) obsession for the 12 year old daughter of his landlady whom he nicknames Lolita (the voice of Alona Tzimberg). Like the book, the play follows the uneven, exploitive, and ultimately fatal sexual and emotional relationship between the two and between Humbert and the other men (Tavori) in Lolita’s life, from a dogged detective to a famous playwright whom Humbert murders in a jealous rage, thereby leading to his own downfall.

Jeanne d’Arc deals with the trial for heresy in 1431 of Joan (Kiki, a robot with Tzimberg’s voice), canonized in 1920 as a saint. The Inquisitor (Tavori) tries every trick in the book to get Joan to incriminate herself but she eludes him to the end.

To say this pairing is unusual is to put it mildly. On the one hand we have Lolita, a not-so-innocent, conniving, perhaps even amoral, teen. On the other we have Joan, an illiterate 15th century peasant girl, burnt at the stake for heresy, whose (blatantly political) conviction was overturned in 1456, her innocence legally and morally confirmed.

Does it work? Yes. And no.

Yes, because of its daring, because of the staging, because of its two actors, because the juxtaposition of its characters is not a gimmick but a means, shockingly, to communicate ideas that we, the audience, need to acknowledge.

No, because at its worst, specifically in Lolita, it got a little self-indulgent, which is to say that what was needed is more ruthlessness and less dazzle, which Jeanne provided

And Dazzle there is. A group of girls dressed in white practices ballet at the barre. Those same girls bear witness in Jeanne. A white Cadillac convertible – here also the symbol of impermanence – dominates the stage in Lolita. Kiki (Jeanne) is white. White is the color of purity, and of innocence.

In Jeanne faith/innocence meets real-politik. Neither has a chance. In Lolita innocence never has a chance either, because there isn't any. Both the girl and the man are damaged goods. The one exploits the other. In the program Lazarov talks about morality but actually the key to both plays is innocence, also known as virtue, which has gone from the world – World War I took care of that in the previous century – virtue in its most literal sense that is. When last did we hear of someone who is deemed virtuous? The word itself arouses only a snigger nowadays . . .

Lolita also put a strain on the actors in terms of text. There is so much of it that both Demidov and Tavori gabbled to such an extent that a lot of the text was simply unintelligible, the brunt borne by Demidov.

That said, Demidov’s Humbert is a chronically restless, pathetic, uncoordinated, self-justifying, by turns craven, by turns full of bravado creature, all of which makes for a towering performance, a characterization that is utterly believable. The same may be said of Tavori whose various characters emanate slyness and corruption. As the Inquisitor in Jeanne, he is wonderfully intense and focused, so much so that one almost forgets – as one is supposed to – that his antagonist is a robot. Let us not forget the voice of Tzimberg that powers both Lolita (whom we never see) and Joan, both females, both abused by the male world, both in their way indomitable.

So, Lolita, a little flawed, a little prolix and Jeanne, terse, powerful – both worth seeing.

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Who’s a Jew

By Jean-Claude Grumberg

Hebrew by Rami Baruch

Directed by Amir Wolf

Cameri Theater, Tel Aviv; 29 January 2019

Here’s all you ever wanted to know about being a Jew, belief versus atheism, the Occupation, the Jewish-Palestinian conflict, the difference between a Jew and a non-Jew, and more, all wrapped up in a smart, gloriously funny, marvelously French comedy. To top that Who’s a Jew? also has Rami Baruch as the Jewish neighbor, a playwright, and Shlomo Vishinski as his Catholic counterpart, retired, who’s quizzing his neighbor on behalf of his wife (she gets all her info from the internet), not that he cares one way or the other, of course.

Their encounters take place in the stairwell of their unpretentious Parisian apartment house deftly designed by Shiran Levi who also did the costumes, as unremarkable as the apartment of course. Amir Castro and Rotem Alro’i did the apt lighting.

At first neighbor Jew runs rings around neighbor Catholic, but gradually the boot gets transferred to the other foot, and then . . . . but why spoil the fun?

To say that Baruch (in a curly wig), and Vishinski are a perfect foil one for the other, to say that they hold the audience in the palm of their hand, to say that every line that comes out of their mouths is honed to brilliance is no more than the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Laughter, they say, is the best medicine, and we’re in dire need. Who’s a Jew? provides a 90 minute welcome alternative to the reality surrounding us.

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One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

By Dale Wasserman

From the book by Ken Keasey

Translated by Ilan ronen

Directed by Omri Nitzan

Cameri Theater, Tel Aviv; 25 February 2019

To paraphrase Dickens, Cuckoo’s Nest is wonderful, Cuckoo’s Nest is dreadful. Wonderful, because director Nitzan and his actors have avoided sentimentality to dig unflinchingly into the dark underbelly of mental illness, save for the (necessarily) mawkish ending, which is not their fault. Dreadful, because Cuckoo’s Nest is an indictment of the human race which gives no quarter, doesn’t allow us to wriggle off the hook as Nitzan’s chilling opening set to the Ode to Joy from Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, and which ends with a looming Mushroom Cloud, amply demonstrates. The play is an allegory with the mental hospital and its inmates as a microcosm of the world we live in.

The story concerns Randle McMurphy (Oz Zehavi), a pugnacious, charismatic non-conformist petty criminal who is sent to the state mental hospital for evaluation. There he comes into contact not only with a motley crew of voluntary and involuntary inmates whose overriding characteristic is fear, but with the manipulative and sadistic Nurse Ratched (Ola Shur-Selektar). The ultimately deadly conflict that develops between the two drives the events of the play. On her side Ratched (an interesting combination of ratchet and wretched) has and exploits the power of the System. On his, Mac (though definitely no angel), has an innate compassion and an irrepressible lust for life. He doesn’t stand a chance, poor sap!

Let’s face it. Despite the relatively enormous strides we have made in treatment of mental illness, we still understand only a very little about it. If we are to be honest, we flinch from it, we would rather not have to face it, let alone deal with it. The mentally ill themselves are still subject to comprehensive abuse, and if they complain ‘who’s gonna believe them? They’re nuts, right?’

These attitudes/ignorances are what Cuckoo’s Nest addresses.

Zehavi makes a persuasive engaging McMurphy, out to get his, to get the best of things and people, but not oblivious to the nuances he finds at the hospital. It’s Shur-Selectar’s unyielding body-language, the small vain touches to her person, the refusal to crank out a stereotype, that make her Ratched so compelling. Top marks too to Ruthie Asarsay for her loose-limbed, uninhibited, unself-conscious Candy – one of her best performances yet, while Mia Landesman cameos riotously as Sandra. Cameri stalwarts Ohad Shahar as Harding, Yitzhak Hiskiya as Scanlon, Ezra Dagan as Martini and Uri Ravitz as Ruckly lean hard on their roles, making each an individual whom we know is leaving so much more unsaid, except that Ruckly – basically a zombie - says never a word. Eran Sarel’s anguished Chief tears at the heartstrings and Moti Katz imbues loud-mouth Cheswick with a humor that would be funny if it weren’t so despairing. As Billy, Shlomi Avraham skillfully manages to be absent most of the time, until he isn’t, and your heart about cracks.

Adam Keller’s functional set and sad-sack costuming allow no illusions, neither does the music which unrelentingly bids “Hello darkness my old friend” (Simon & Garfunkle) amid the hard-hitting rest.

Cuckoo’s Nest is not fun. It’s hard, it’s necessary, and why, you have to ask yourselves are we watching this “j’accuse” in the Israel of today?

[It’s not terribly relevant, but I’ll note it anyway: I played Dr. Spivey, the hospital’s chief shrink, in a production of Cuckoo’s Nest back in 1975.  (It was the same year the film adaptation of the novel [1962] and play [1963] came out.)  It was my first role after getting out of the army in 1974 and attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts for a year and studying at HB Studio.]

Dispatches from Israel 13

by Helen Kaye

[Helen has curtailed her usual active schedule somewhat of late.  That’s part of why this is her first contribution to “Dispatched from Israel” since last October.  I’m glad to report, however, that she’s back now with three reviews of productions, all from Tel Aviv, from last fall and this month.  As many ROT readers know, I’ve known Helen for many years—from when she was an actress here in New York City—and we’ve remained in contact since she made her aliyah to Israel some 30 years ago.  She became a cultural journalist for the Jerusalem Post (as well as a stage director in her off-duty life) and has shared her writing with me and, therefore, with readers of Rick On Theater, since I started the blog almost nine yeas ago now.  I really like posting her JP reviews and occasional other reports on ROT because it gives me a chance to cover theater from outside my own small cruising range.  It’s also another voice on the blog, which I try to promote as much as I’m able.]

The Book of David

By Ro’i Chen based on the book by Stefan Heym

   directed by Yevgeny Arye

Gesher Theater, Tel Aviv; 18 September 2017

Whether he uses his knife to peel an apple or slit a throat, it’s all one to Benaya (Doron Tavori) Solomon’s (Micki Leon) thuggish, and ever practical Chief of Staff whose job it is to get things done – in this case The Book of David to be written by historian Eitan (Alon Friedman), plucked for the job from his cosy life with wife Esther (Karin Seruya) and mistress Lilit (Ruth Rasyuk).

If he undertakes the task it’ll have to be the truth Eitan says in half a question, awed in the presence of Might.

“Of course, of course,” Solomon reassures him, leaving Benaya to growl that it’s gotta be the ‘right’ book, making sure that the exploits of shepherd boy David turned powerful monarch David are seen in the ‘right’ light and if it all didn’t quite happen that way, well, “man is the legend he creates.” Facts, fiction, who cares?

Sic transit gloria mundi goes the Latin tag meaning that all glories and honors are transitory and Michael Karamenko seems to have designed his set of plastics, scaffolding – a replica of Michaelangelo’s celebrated David is surrounded by it – and creaking, massive wooden doors to reflect that, as does eternal outsider Amenhotep, Solomon’s massively cynical Egyptian eunuch beautifully handled by Israel Demidov. Stefania Georgeokayta’s costumes cleverly link past and present because, as we quickly understand, The Book of David is a satire that Yevgeny Arye has realized with his usual flair and perception, his love of all things circus this time portrayed in marvelously grotesque mime sequences that tell the story of David and Goliath and David and Bathsheba played by such as Gilad Kelter and Alexander Senderovitch.

To get to the truth Eitan interviews people who actually knew David such as Michal, his first wife played with sorrowful dignity by Lilian Roth and Yoav, David’s army chief, now a shadow offered by Yevgeny Terlitzki. It’s Yoav’s throat that Benaya slits, saying “We’re building an enlightened and cultured society here and don’t need the likes of him.”

Tavori and Leon alternate Solomon and Benaya – the all-wise and his alter ego. Tavori – gravelly voiced and little bent, makes Benaya impatient. He wants deeds, not words. As the natively arrogant Solomon, Leon is all for words. They hide so much.

Seruya and Rasiuk play their roles with grace. Friedman’s Eitan grows from village innocent to horrified chronicler who realizes too late what he’s let himself in for.

“The more I learn about you, the less I understand about myself,” Eitan tells the statue. “Danger lurks behind every written word.”

The satire is about legitimacy, truth and what we do with either or both. It’s not a coincidence that Eitan is a historian. “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it,” is a paraphrase from George Santayana.

Even if you do ignore history, go see the production. It’s well worth.

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Herzl Said

By Ro’i Hen

Artistic direction by Yevgeny Arye

Music by Roni Reshef

Gesher Theater, Tel Aviv; 15 October 2017

Herzl Said starts with a coffin on a stage and it’s full steam ahead from there. This is a gleeful, irreverent, exhilarating, zippy and mischievous sleigh-ride of a show/satire that will delight the eye, tickle the funnybone and warm the heart of all who watch it, and by all means take the kids above the age of 10.

It’s only afterwards you realize that it also makes us think.

In 1902, two years before his death, Herzl published Altneuland, his famous and utopian romance on a future Jewish state in the then Ottoman Palestine whose contents fuel this show, as does the title. “Herzl Said” is the Israeli equivalent of “Simon Says” and its antics also propel the musical in unexpected, often risible, directions.

Just to give you a taste, during one of the many scenes, Herzl, very nicely played with the ever undiminished gravitas and dignity of the straight-man by Gilad Kelter, comes across the rest of the cast discussing another person whose name (tfoo!) begins with H, but Herzl thinks they’re discussing him . . . .

The rest of this accomplished cast plays two sets of characters, the Israelis of 1949, the year Herzl’s bones – remember that coffin? – were moved to their present site on Mt. Herzl, and the protagonists of the novel living in a Jewish state where Arabs and Jews live harmoniously side by side, where there’s no social or economic inequality, where . . . but you get the drift, right?

And they do it superbly, tossing off Ro’i Hen’s rhyming couplets, barbed dialogues and song parodies with utmost suavity, especially Ruth Rasyuk and Henry David, who sing most of them – taken from beloved songs by such as Naomi Shemer and John Lennon.

The others are Uri Yaniv, Assaf Pariente, Eli Menashe, and Ziv Zohar Meir in his alter ego as a 1949 haredi rabbi, who at one time snarls “If you will it. Zero. It’s a dream!”

Herzl Said happens on a stage within a stage – Nadav Barnea and Judith Aharon are responsible for the show’s deft lighting and costumes – into and from which actors and props enter/emerge as they switch between time and novel.

As every Israeli Jewish child knows, the thoroughly assimilated Viennese journalist Herzl was jerked into awareness of his Jewishness by the infamous Dreyfuss trial of 1895, convening the 1st Zionist congress at Basel in 1897.

And every Israeli Jewish child knows in his bones and blood the proper version of Herzl’s famous dictum from Altneuland: ‘If you will it, it is no dream’ but Hen and the play insist that we also pay attention to the end of that sentence – printed on page two of the handsome program – that says, no less definitely, “And if you don’t will it, everything I have related here is a dream, and a dream it will remain.”

Is that our aim? To be a failed dream? I hope not.

*  *  *  *

Doing His Will

By Moti Lerner

Directed by Aya Kaplan

Habima National Theatre, Tel Aviv; 5 February 2018

First of all, go and see this play because it’s good theater and Aya Kaplan has done a great job on it. Second it impels you to think because politically-hearted playwright Moti Lerner has written a thoughtful and gripping drama that asks some uncomfortable questions about faith, belief and the question of religion in our lives.

Doing His Will is based on the true story of Esti Weinstein, born into Hassidut Gur, who left the sect for the secular world, wrote a book that opened a window to the Gur world and her experiences, yet later committed suicide, leaving a note that said in part “. . . time isn’t healing and the pain doesn’t stop.”

The drama moves back and forth in time and space, but essentially we meet Dassi (Osnat Fishman) at her wedding to Yaakov (Yoav Donat). The trouble starts with the wedding night. Though he continually turns to Rabbi Zilber (Igal Sade) for advice and instruction, he cannot perform, and the blame, naturally, is ascribed to Dassi. From there things go from bad to worse. Try as she will, Dassi cannot accommodate herself to what she perceives as the soul-destroying rules of Gur. She leaves for the secular life with one of her daughters, Gilli (Sivan Mast) divorces Yaakov and pays a dire price. She may not see or communicate with the other six.

All efforts to reverse that rabbinical ruling are in vain. So is life she decides. It is a week before she is found dead in her car.

The title is deliberately ambiguous. Is it ‘his’ or ‘His’ or both? And which is paramount? Jehudit Aharon’s understated set contributes to the ambiguity. Two tall brick walls bisected by a path are the backdrop. Are they protection or boundary? In the foreground on a platform facing one another are two single beds – and it is no coincidence that they resemble biers. Dori Parnes’ minor themes add poignancy – we could do without the ‘heavenly choirs’ though. Keren Granek’s lighting and Aviah Bash’s costumes meld seamlessly.

The secular Jewish world, whether or not it believes in a Deity, is at a disadvantage vis á vis the religious one, especially that of the ultra-orthodox whose passion we cannot fathom and whose way of life is often as alien to our understanding as a man from Mars. The guiding principle of Gur is Sanctity from which human sexuality detracts. Hence the very severe prohibitions regarding marriage and sexuality save those for biblically enjoined reproduction.

This is the world to which Yaakov adheres and which breaks Dassi. Lerner has not written an anti-religious polemic. Doing His Will is not about faith, or belief but about control. In his absolute obedience Yaakov becomes a robot. In her questioning the order of things Dassi becomes a rebel and therefore intolerable. Lerner is asking which way do we want and need to go, a question particularly apposite in a society whose government is moving swiftly towards fascism.

The acting is uniformly splendid. Fishson’s Dassi is powerful, passionate and touching. Donat’s Yaakov is not a bad man but one who is irretrievably torn between instinct and obedience. Sade’s omnipotent Zilber is as unyielding as granite but could use some human nuance. The ever excellent Orna Rothberg shines as Ahuva, Dassi’s torn mother, and Moti Gershon is gently tough as Dassi’s brother Haim who has also joined the secular world, become a lawyer and her advocate. Mast as Gilli must needs wear her courage visibly and as pregnant Hanni, Dassi’s eldest, Aurelle Maor is as visibly torn. Also, and as definitely, “don’t judge” says this play.

[As I observed in my afterword to “Dispatches 12,” the list of Helen’s past contributions to ROT has grown too long to append to new offerings.  I suggest that anyone curious about my friend’s opinions of past productions in Israel, as well as her other cultural commentary and travel journals, look back at “Dispatches 10” (11 November 2016) for the dates of Helen’s posts—look down in the afterword—and add numbers 11 (17 June 2017) and 12 (27 October 2017).]

Dispatches from Israel 6

by Helen Kaye

[Jerusalem Post reviewer Helen Kaye, a frequent contributor to ROT, sent me a new notice, one for an Israeli adaptation of Cervantes’s Don Quixote by Ro’i Chen, a playwright and translator, called I Don Quixote.  Helen’s other contributions to ROT include “Dispatches” 1 through 5 on 23 January 2013, 6 August 2013, 20 November 2013, 2 June 2015, and 22 August 2015 (which also includes an article Helen wrote on the Israel Festival).  (I also posted another of Helen’s JP reviews, Molière’s Tartuffe, on 2 November 2014 as a Comment to “Dispatches 3.”)   ROTters might also enjoy looking back at ”Help! It’s August: Kid-Friendly Summer Festivals in Israel,” 12 September 2010; ”Acre (Acco) Festival, Israel,” 9 November 2012; “Berlin,” 22 July 2013; “A Trip to Poland,” 7 August 2015.]

I Don Quixote

By Ro’i Chen

Directed by Yevgeny Arye

Gesher Theatre, Tel Aviv; 2 & 3 September 2015

Before we start on the ‘why’, let’s begin with the ‘what’. This Quixote dares us, plays us, enmeshes and expels us, assaults and woos us, begs our belief and taunts it, severally and all together.

This Quixote is Theater straight up.

And with actors the stature of Doron Tavori and Sasha Demidov alternating the title role you expect and get excellence, from them and from the rest of the cast. Yevgeny Arye’s is a vast talent that sometimes runs away with him. Not this time.

So what are we seeing?

The big Noga stage, designed by Semyon Fastuch,  is a huge, rusty iron-riveted prison cell that deliberately dwarfs its inmates. These are Prisoner One/Quixote (Tavori/Demidov) and Prisoner Two/Sancho Panza (Alexander Senderovitch). One is a lifer. Two gets out in three years. They’ve been cellmates for five. One has just finished reading aloud, for the umpteenth time, Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes to his illiterate bunk-buddy.

It starts there. The stirring adventures of the literary world’s most celebrated duo weave into and impinge upon, the prisoners’ ‘real-time’ lives until Two gets suddenly released. Then the insanity that’s been waiting for One in the wings, pounces, and it all goes downhill from there.

I won’t spoil the fun – and there’s a good bit of that – and spell out the farcical bits of what ultimately becomes tragic.

Tavori’s One/Quixote is more grounded and absolute, menacing and vulnerable at the same time. Demidov is more tenuous, less connected; you almost see the break with reality coming. Both of them have an incomparable partner in Senderovitch’s Two/Sancho. He’s funny, touching, irritating, ingratiating and completely wonderful.

Yuval Yanai as the warder/physician/slavemaster still remains somehow human beneath his mandated, casual cruelty. Natasha Manor’s nurse/wardress/Madam are creative and marvelously individual characters while Karin Seruya neatly cameos as Two’s wife.

Playwright Gilad Evron and director Ofira Henig did what I termed a meaty retake of Quixote in 2008. This one is another look at the great 17th-century classic that rivals the Bible in sales.

So does it all work? Almost, almost, and that brings us to the why.

Once or twice, One/Quixote hums the beginning of the title song from Man of La Mancha: “I am I, Don Quixote, the lord of La Mancha, destroyer of evil am I…” and it’s later reinforced by the Hebrew slaves chorus from Verdi’s Nabucco and Jacques Brel singing “The Impossible Dream” in which one man will strive ‘with his last ounce of courage/To fight the unbeatable foe, to reach the unreachable star,’ so that ‘the world will be better for this’.

There’s a word for that, derived from Quixote. It’s ‘quixotic’, something that’s ambitious, idealistic to the core, and yet completely unrealistic. We’re quixotic if we know that yet try to change things anyway. The ogres and monsters of our day are corruption, needless brutality, indifference, selfishness and the rest, and I think that Chen’s Quixote is trying to address that.  He’s also saying we need each other, that human life is interdependent, that unless we realize that we are lost, as One is lost when Two is released. That’s a huge bite for one play.

We all need our Dulcinea, Quixote’s unattainable love, and Chen’s Quixote closely reaches for her.

Dispatches from Israel 4

by Helen Kaye

[My friend Helen, who writes for the Jerusalem Post, has sent me three short reviews on recent productions in Tel Aviv and Be’er Sheva.  Helen’s reviews, though the paper only gives her a small amount of space to express her assessments, are always interesting and revealing, but these three just strike me as especially intriguing—both from the perspective of Helen’s expression and in her descriptions of the productions themselves.  These three seem particularly provocative.  See how you feel.  ~Rick]

Alice

By Roy Chen

Inspired by Lewis Carroll

Directed by Yehezkel Lazarov

Gesher Theater, Tel Aviv

5/5/15

Alice is A) theatrical, B) bold, C) questioning, D) all of the above. The answer is D, and one is tempted to say ‘of course’. Alice is also a mite self-conscious, with almost a freeze-frame quality, as if creators Roy Chen and Yehezkel Lazarov – he also designed the set – were struggling with that bugbear of our almost-too-connected age – tmi or too much information.

The story of Alice Liddell and Charles Dodgson – Lewis Carroll – is sad, and both went to their deaths their lips firmly sealed. He was 24 when they first met in 1856 and she was four years old. Of the letters he wrote her, none remain. Her mother burned them. That there was a rift between the Liddells and Carroll is documented. There is no evidence at all to suggest that the relationship between Carroll and the Liddell girls (there were three sisters), was improper.

This Alice follows its heroine from childhood (Bar Sade), to the troubled teen years (Neta Shpigelman), to womanhood (Efrat Ben-Tzur) bringing her together with the characters in both the real world, Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass, and especially with The White Knight aka Carroll aka Doron Tavori – is there anything this actor cannot do? He stands on his head for an appreciable time while Alice/Sade is right side up –what’s topsy and what turvy? - against a two meter high white wall that extends clear around the theater, and on which video images flicker.

The White Knight and the wall’s flickering images are central. They relate not only to human vulnerability but to its fallibility. To the almost abyss between childhood experienced and childhood remembered. The Knight is both feeble and strong, comforting and distanced. The images are mostly flickering lines as if to illustrate the thin line between reality and illusion. They become raging flames when teen Alice/Shpigelman is (rather unnecessarily) raped, and shadowy – are they clouds and soldiers? – when grownup Alice/Ben Tzur is traveling a mysterious train/timeline with all the other characters including her husband/Humpty Dumpty (Alexander Senderovich) and the Knight, now a grave watching presence.

The Gesher actors are here a formidable ensemble and Lazarov’s dancer past affords his staging the grace and fluidity of a ballet. It’s not inappropriate to say that Alice is theater-dance, very watchable, with the kind of go-for-broke attitude that belongs in repertory theater and more often than not, to Gesher. This Alice is to savor.

*  *  *  *

Oedipus – A Case Study

By Sophocles

Translated by Shimon Buzaglo

Directed by Hanan Snir

Habimartef (Habima Basement), Tel Aviv

1/3/15

You might say the title says it all. The original is Oedipus the King, one of the greatest among the surviving canon of classical Greek theater. Fifth-century BCE Greek audiences would have known the Oedipus legend, an ancient myth of incest and patricide, of fate, gods, and that fatal self-blind pride the Greeks called hubris, but they’d have eagerly watched to see what Sophocles did with it, as have audiences down the centuries since.

So Hanan Snir’s bold and stimulating take in which the story of Oedipus becomes a therapeutic technique to jolt a near catatonic patient back to reality.

We are in a psychiatric facility, in one of its lecture halls complete with viewing gallery (Roni Toren’s set), where the white coated staff psychiatrists are having their daily meeting. Under discussion is a young man. PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) is mentioned.

“If we do this,” cautions head psychiatrist Gil Frank, later Creon, “we have to go exactly by the protocol,” meaning they cannot deviate from the script, come what may. The others agree save for Dvora Kedar who’ll as reluctantly play the blind Tiresias later on.

And that’s what this Oedipus is about. The causes and effects of moral, emotional and finally physical blindness, how denial, suppression, repression can cause disease in mind, body and the body politic.

A reference to us here? Of course. It lashes out in the speech Oedipus makes to the citizens of Thebes on finding Laios’ murderer.

And the doctors begin. There’s no attempt to be ‘real’. It’s dispassionate. A research project.

Enter Oedipus (Alex Krul). Hoodied, head down, body slack, he’s seated in a chair. Gently Frank/Creon draws back the hood, takes the hair out of his face, prompts him with the king’s first lines to the people of plague-stricken Thebes, and we are off.

The doctors/psychiatrists play all the parts while keeping a watchful eye on Frank and their patient as he’s stripped of layer after layer. We follow Krul as he’s sucked more and more into the role, as he sheds lethargy and dives from the high board into the arrogant and imperceptive man that is Oedipus before the truth clobbers him.

The violent scene between Oedipus and the furious coopted ‘Tiresias’ is a tour de force in a bravura yet completely disciplined performance from them both.

Tying on long skirts over their clinical whites, Aharon Almog. Michael Koresh, Dov Reiser and Ghassan Abbas ably take on the chorus, with the latter two enjoying a delicious comic turn as shepherd and messenger. Under Frank/Creon’s watchful eye they sensitively prod, lead, inveigle Oedipus/the patient. These are strong performances as is that of Frank who switches seamlessly between Creon and mentor, never losing sight of either. The only one who seems a bit unsure is Yevgenia Dodina who plays Jocasta. We can only surmise why. Is it that she is also her patient’s personal therapist? Does she feel a more than professional interest so that playing Jocasta gives rein to forbidden feelings? Dodina’s deliberate ambivalence reaches out to us.

This Oedipus works for me. Go see for yourselves.

*  *  *  *

Romeo and Juliet

By William Shakespeare

Translated by Eli Bijaoui

Directed by Irad Rubinstain

Bersheva Theater, Be'er Sheva

4/3/15

The heart breaks. Of course it does. This is Romeo & Juliet, the most tender, lyrical, wrenching perception of young love that anybody ever wrote. Set it anywhere, anytime and its beautiful simplicities will transcend whatever shape it takes. So it is with this R&J and what director Irad Rubinstain calls a “post-apocalyptic” vision when all that remains of the world we know is the unpredictable predictability of human nature.

Its most moving moment is when the bereft Old Capulet, played by the never-more-superb Amir Kriaf, kneels wordlessly to comfort the bereft Lady Montague (Adva Edni) beside the bodies of their children. Words have no place in this merciless world. The irony of their resting place is wordless too. They lie in the center of a kind of mandala, symbol for a sacred space. As the light on this sacrilege slowly fades to black we have to think on the heavy price we pay for baseless hatred.

Heaven knows we have enough of it here.

The production is 2 hours long, and we’re not used to that any more. Too bad! And this one works on all levels.

Strangely, as with Gesher’s Othello [earlier this year] we have a set of catwalks and steps, except that in Svetlana Breger’s version they’re curved, and there’s two of them, both broken and rusty. Maor Zabar’s seemingly makeshift costumes are rusty and patched too. There’s lots of tattoos because it’s not so much families we have here as tribes.

The masks at the Capulets’ ball, and if tribes then the accompanying ritual, are gasmasks, and remember the plastic we covered our windows with in the Gulf War? That’s also there. Poor Friar Laurence, played with a loving desperation by Muli Shulman, wears a tatty orange-pinky robe over his grubby tee.

More acting honors go to Avigail Harari’s high-octane Juliet, a sustained, luminous performance, to Tom Hagy’s hyperactive, mercurial Mercutio, to Tom Avni’s gut-stunned Romeo, to Sarit Vino Elad’s garrulous, protective, old-servant-taking-liberties Nurse, and indeed to the entire and splendid cast.

Albert Einstein’s famous comment that we’ll fight WWIII with sticks and stones resonated strongly with Irad Rubinstain. Maybe words will desert us too. Is this provocative production a warning?

[Helen’s other contributions to ROT include “Dispatches” 1, 2, and 3 on 23 January 2013, 6 August 2013, and 20 November 2013.  ROTters might also enjoy looking back at “Help! It's August: Kid-Friendly Summer Festivals in Israel,” 12 September 2010; “Acre (Acco) Festival, Israel,” 9 November 2012; and “Berlin,” 22 July 2013.]